GAP, Pa. — A holiday cookie exchange, swap or cookie party are typically informal events with family and friends. But family cookie bakes and exchanges where large groups of friends and family spend time baking and sharing cookies from time-tested recipes will be rare this Christmas due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With stay-at-home safety guidelines in place to help limit the spread of infections, families are showing caution about socializing in groups. Many cookie events have been put on hold for what everyone hopes will be a more festive 2021 holiday season next year.
In the town of Gap, Sonya Burkholder hosted just a small group — her mom and sisters — the first week in December for their annual cookie bake and exchange. She set up and prepared all the needed pans, ingredients and utensils in her large kitchen to host members of her (Weaver) family for their annual get-together.
Sonya Burkholder and her mother, Sharon (the source of many of the recipes), joined with her sisters Jen and Shirlene, sister-in-law Darla and a close friend, Carolyn, as they baked sand tarts and Lepp cookies with their preschool children. Each of them also had brought about three dozen of two varieties of cookies they had prepared at home to share, so everyone left with dozens of assorted cookies from treasured family recipes.
The Burkholder family worships at the Muddy Creek Mennonite Church in Fivepointville and Sonya Burkholder has participated in baking and canning events there with fellow church women in the past. She said there definitely seem to be fewer cookie bakes taking place this year due to the pandemic.
Fortunately, Burkholder’s large kitchen held plenty of room. She prepared two tables ready for rolling out cookie dough and cutting out holiday-shaped treats for the baking part of the day. The kitchen’s two large ovens were also both put to good use throughout the baking fun. Burkholder said she does a lot of cooking for her family, including their three children, but in the spring she hopes to also expand an existing small catering business with her husband, Ron.
The young children settled in and played in the living room as the women rolled out the family recipe cookie dough (extra thin for sand tarts, they said) and chatted about family, friends and cookies.
It wasn’t long before the first batch of sand tarts, also called Pennsylvania Dutch sugar cookies, were baking on multiple oven shelves.
“We’ve done this for years,” Burkholder said, “so we do it without having to think too much about it, allowing us to catch up with family news along the way.”
As batches of cookies came out of the oven, the moms invited their children to join in with decorating. An abundance of sprinkles and other decorations topped the cookies. The traditional Lepp cookies were topped with icing from the family’s usual icing recipe.
“This is very familiar for us,” Burkholder said, “as we all did this with our mother as we grew up. Many of the recipes are not only from my mother’s Hoover side of the family but also from my dad’s Weaver heritage.”
For the past several years, rather than bake up to 1,500 cookies of several varieties in one day as they did with their mother as children, the cookie bake exchange now has been refined, so that some cookies are baked at home to bring and share.
After the baking was complete and everyone had tasted the fruits of their morning labor, the women exchanged cookies to take home to share with their families. This year, they made peanut butter blossoms, sand tarts, molasses cookies, walnut frosties, chocolate crinkles, chocolate chip cookies, Lepp cookies, peanut butter tarts, cinnamon rolls, pumpkin ice cookies, monster cookies and Amish hat cookies.
Getting together each year to bake cookies for this group is less about the variety and sweet taste of the cookies, than having a large variety of cookies to share. And, it can be a fun competition on both how the cookies look and their presentation, as well as an enjoyable event for kids.
The first recorded modern mention of cookie exchanges can be found in a 1936 article in a Syracuse, New York, newspaper. Robin Olson, in her “History of The Cookie Exchange and the Cookie Party Cookbook,” believes modern cookie swapping in the U.S. has been around since the1800s. She writes that her mother-in-law gave her a (cookie exchange) recipe pamphlet dating back decades to the mid-20th century.
Cookies have never really needed a special event to be enjoyed, as they are a universal treat. But in 1987, Matt and Lori Nader, who owned the Blue Chip Co. in San Francisco, started a national cookie day that is now celebrated on Dec. 4 each year. The company is still in business and has an online presence for internet orders.
Burkholder said their recipes come from several generations of her family: “They are simple and help us carry on a tradition and connect with our past,” she said.
“The dough we use for our sand tarts comes from my mother’s mother and although it is quite simple including flour, sugar and lots of eggs and butter,” she added, smiling, “and butter seems to make everything better. We enjoy making them year in and year out. It gives us an important connection with our heritage each year as we prepare to celebrate the holidays,” she said.
December 11, 2020 at 04:46PM
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